Premier Rock Forum

Ebert has it as his #1 movie of 2007. What say you?

is this the new movie with michael cera?

he's not crap.

not at all.

Look, the logo has squiggly writing! Hahah, the white guy said "homeskillet!" Awesome -- a reference to the 1980s! Say, this looks exactly the same as Little Miss Sunshine, Thumbsucker, Garden State, and I Heart Huckabees!

Juno sucked balls. That girls voice was fucking annoying and the only funny scenes were the ones where her character didn't dominate... Michael Cera's parts were excellent.

I don't know what was up with the namedropping in this film either. Keep the good music references out of your shitty movie. Goddamn.

CRAP

AAAAAAAARGH wrote:Look, the logo has squiggly writing! Hahah, the white guy said "homeskillet!" Awesome -- a reference to the 1980s! Say, this looks exactly the same as Little Miss Sunshine, Thumbsucker, Garden State, and I Heart Huckabees!

So, you saw it then?

So, ok, if yer the type of person who gets turned off by "non-realistic" dialogue (because god dammit, i go to the movies to see real life played out on the screen, which is why i loved "The Man Who Woke Up, Took as Shower, Went to Work, Came Home, Watched TV and Died"), yeah, you'll probably be pulled out of this movie pretty quickly. And yeah, Rainn Wilson (or whatever his name is...Dwight Shrute) and his whole "your eggo is preggo" routine is pretty annoying, but hey! He goes away after, um, two minutes of film time, never to be seen again! (Yes, shockingly, almost his entire screen time is used in the trailer, because the marketing people in charge of trailers realize that having That Guy From The Office in the movie will be enough to sell a few tickets, even if he's only there for two minutes. What? A trailer be misleading? WELL I NEVER!)

And yet, the use of all that "Gee, watch me be really clever and turn witty phrases! Check out my vocabulary!" speak that comes out of Juno's mouth serves a purpose. She's a 16-year-old girl trying to act like she's way more mature than she is while putting up a front of sarcasm, cynicism and humor to mask her very 16-year-old emotional vulnerability. Hence, yes, lots of way-too-witty speechifying from the teenager. And sure, while the whole "character puts up a brave front to mask her true emotions" is a pretty standard film thing, i feel it's handled here with lots of heart, brains, and funny.

It's a sweet movie, without being saccharine about it (unless your idea of saccharine is lots of references to the baby being a parasite), it handles what could be terribly inflammatory afterschool special material with a lot of intelligence, and it has tons of believable characters that i completely identified with and dug.

Then again, i'm a fucking sap and occasionally a movie comes along that tugs at my heartstrings just so and makes me weepy with an amazing final scene that sort of reminds me of the long term relationship that i ended a year and a half ago and still have the occasional regret about. So...sue me.

I loved it. Not crap.

i am going to have to agree with the dr. on this one.

i don't think this movie should be even mentioned in the same breath as garden state. i fucking hate that movie, it's like a bad student film with everyone trying way to hard to "say something." juno is constructed well, paced well, and i'll be god damned edited well. yeah, some of the lines are a bit too precious at times, but still not awful...especially from a first time screen writer. sometimes we don't need deadly realism in our characters mouths....that groucho marx what a lame-o

i want to see this pretty bad

kenoki wrote:i want to see this pretty bad

Me too. And I will bet a buck that I will feel the same as Dr. A. I'll bet another buck that Ellen Page will have a very long, respectable career and be known as one of the greats.

owen wrote:i don't think this movie should be even mentioned in the same breath as garden state. i fucking hate that movie, it's like a bad student film with everyone trying way to hard to "say something."

Yeah. I got through about 30 minutes of Garden State before turning it off with a mighty yawn. Fuck that movie.

sometimes we don't need deadly realism in our characters mouths....that groucho marx what a lame-o

Ha!

owen wrote:yeah, some of the lines are a bit too precious at times, but still not awful...especially from a first time screen writer. sometimes we don't need deadly realism in our characters mouths....that groucho marx what a lame-o

The "precious" lines contributed to a general lack of believability that basically did this movie in for me. The whole Iggy and the Stooges / Herschel Gordon Lewis precocious teen thing is so trite. And then she brings over some "tunage" for Justin Bateman's character and puts on what? All the Young Dudes? Like that would be new to him?

There were just too many pretentious references like Iggy / HGL for me. But mostly, I didn't really give a shit about her character. So in the end, the whole heavy handed feelgood resolution was basically lost on me.

I will say this - there were several scenes where Ellen Page was required to really act, and I thought she did them well. I do believe she has the potential to be a great actress - I just hope the next time she gets a better script.